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I just sent this over to the helpdesk to see if they can do anything with it or suggest a workaround.  My suspicion is that this is broken due to the move to Windows servers for home directories.
“Prior to moving home directories to the \\files Windows servers, a UNIX symbolic link to \usr\campuscgi in a user’s home directory would allow a user direct access to their campuscgi directory from a mapped drive.  The symbolic link would appear as a folder on the mapped drive and a user could drag and drop files to it.  [Classes] … utilized this feature to ease student introduction to a UNIX environment.”

I’m gunning for remote upgrades and installs of my Windows third party software lately. I do not have the luxury of SMS for this purpose and I hesitate to invest in an add-on solution.  So I have been working on the problem from two angles.  First, I’m building a reporting system on the back of a project called Winventory.  I’m a few batch files short of an automated system.  With automated reports I will be able to more efficiently manage my software updates.  To actually deploy packages is the second half that has yet to be finalized, but I do have a plan of attack.  For each piece of software on my image I need determine two things, namely the installer it uses and whether the installer needs assistance completing.  Depending on the way the software comes packaged it may be equiped for silent install already (MSI, InstallShield, INNO Setup).  If the software installer isn’t able to run silently I will need to script the process using something like AutoIT.

I have tested one software package so far, WinEDT.  It comes packaged with the INNO Installer which takes the /VERYSILENT command line option.  To run the setup on the target machine I do:

psexec \\target -u admin-name -e -c winedt54.exe /VERYSILENT

If psexec reports an error code of 0 and Winventory reports the new software’s installation I know it worked.  Licensing WinEDT requires a few registry entries so I do a test install and capture the writes the winedt54.exe process makes to the registry with Regmon.  I then export the key branch, copy it to the target machine and run:

psexec \\target -u admin-name -e regedit -s c:\winedt54.reg

This method works very well for one machine with a single installation.  I do not believe it would be manageable in a situation with thousands of machines.  But in my small workgroup of 200+ I think a little batch scripting and research can handle the whole job automatically.

This is an update to an earlier entry where I walked through the steps to creating an apt repository for Red Hat-based linux distributions.  As the community has settled on yum for management, I’ve written this set of instructions on how to create the repository geared toward CentOS.  This method utilizes automounted ISOs so you do not have to extract the files and waste disc space just to serve up both the content of the ISOs and the ISO files themselves.
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Editing the font and size of text in a text box or callout box in Adobe Professional is a little counterintuitive.  The help system isn’t much help as it says that the text is determined by the ’system default settings’.

To edit the text size or font easily open the PDF file in question.  Hit Control/Command+E to bring up the Properties toolbar.  The Properties toolbar is dynamic and will reflect the changeable elements of whatever you have highlighted.  With the toolbar displayed, highlight your text box or callout text.  You’ll see that the toolbar displays font size and style selection options.